Smart Aleck
I began to form a new version of myself. When I started fourth grade, I began carrying my lunch in a brown paper bag rather than my Peanuts lunchbox.* I stopped wearing dresses, replacing them with a supply of leggings and baggy shirts with abstract, geometric prints.
Next came the attitude. Fortunately, the great importance of never asking for what I wanted had been instilled in me at an early age, something that has served me well in my adult life.** My mother did this so I wouldn’t ask for candy at the grocery store, but it had the unexpected effect of turning me into a passive-aggressive smart aleck.
I’ll give you an example of something that happened when I was five or six: When my dad went on one of his infamous tirades against an inanimate object, I couldn’t say to him, “Daddy, I don’t like when you lose your temper. I wish you would stop screaming obscenities at the Datsun.”*** Instead, I stood at the kitchen door and yelled into the garage, “How can a car be a stupid son of a bitch? It’s a car!” — whereupon one of my older siblings spirited me away to their room.
Clearly, I had a natural talent that I could develop into something truly obnoxious.
So, back to that lady in Hawaii who didn’t find me cute anymore. Even at nine, I knew she was being a superficial jerk, and I wished the way she treated me didn’t bother me so much. So at some point after our return home, I figured out that if someone disapproved of something about me, the best course of action was to act like I didn’t care.
This was hard for me because, as the baby of a large family who was taught that her greatest accomplishment was going on a trip to Lucky without begging for a box of Trix, I sought the approval of older people.
So there were faltering steps. When the pastor’s wife at my mom’s not-quite-a-cult, we-just-meet-in-a-house-on-Saturday-nights-and-speak-in-tongues-for-six-hours church chided my friend and me for being too noisy when we were shut in a guest room while the adults praised the Lord loudly and incomprehensibly in the living room, I burst into tears. But when she said we wouldn’t be allowed to come to their weekly meetings anymore if we didn’t learn to be quiet, I managed to gather myself, and through my tears, say, “Well maybe I don’t want to come to your stupid church anyway.”
I meant it. I didn’t want to go to church with my mom. It meant being in a small room with nothing to do for hours, and I felt uncomfortable hearing the adults wailing and sobbing while they were under the influence of the Holy Spirit.**** I much preferred staying home and watching The Golden Girls while my dad “babysat” me. But I didn’t have the skills to communicate that. It would have seemed too much like asking for something I wanted.
I don’t remember what happened immediately after my teary rebellion. My mom probably yanked me out of there, delivering a talk about respect on the drive home while I fell asleep in the passenger seat. (It was 2 a.m., after all.) What I do remember is that my mom never made me go to “church” with her again.
Clearly, not caring and saying so in the most ungracious way possible was the best way to get what I wanted.
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* I had been in the local newspaper because of that lunchbox. See Appendix A.
** This has not served me well in my adult life.|
*** Because this is what normal six-year-olds talk like, right?
**** If you’ve never been around charismatic Evangelical Christians, let me quickly educate you about what they’re like: They will use any reason at all to start speaking in tongues. An important life event, for example — like a children’s pool party.
